There’s about half a season left, but the Florida Panthers’ playoff push has already begun
Florida Panthers coach Joel Quenneville didn’t like what he saw in his team’s 5-2 loss to the Arizona Coyotes on Tuesday.
Too much passiveness at times. Not executing on high-end opportunities. A failure to generate momentum on home ice.
“That all-out relentlessness,” Quenneville said, “is somewhat sporadic.”
He and the Panthers know that needs to change fast.
There are still 39 games left in the season, picking back up Thursday against the Vancouver Canucks as Florida continues a four-game homestand at the BB&T Center.
But for the Panthers, the playoff push has already begun. That’s only magnified with how tight the standings are just beyond the halfway point of the season.
Heading into Wednesday, Florida is on the outside looking in with 49 points after losing three of their last five in regulation. But even that only has them one point behind being tied with the Philadelphia Flyers and Columbus Blue Jackets for the second wild card spot and five points from being tied with the Tampa Bay Lightning for second place in the Atlantic Division.
A five-point swing in the other direction, however, has the Panthers in sixth place in the wild card race.
A break here, an unexpected win there or an upset loss in between could be the difference between being in the hunt for the Stanley Cup or sitting out of the postseason for the seventh time in eight seasons.
“It’s going to have to be,” Quenneville said. “It absolutely is. The whole league, probably, everybody’s got something to fight for. Everybody’s pushing, whether you’re pushing for first in your division or conference. Everybody’s looking for home ice and then you’re looking to get in. I think everybody’s pretty well in that mix across the board. It’s going to make for a great run here.”
That means shoring up the defense. The Panthers are giving up the sixth-most goals per game (3.33) and have surrendered 11 power-play goals over the past 10 games.
That also means starting out stronger. Florida has scored just three first-period goals over the past five games and has trailed or been tied heading into the first intermission in four of those contests as a result.
“We need to just kind of dig deep here,” forward Noel Acciari said. “We can’t be going back and forth. We need to string together three, four wins in a row and kind of separate ourselves a little bit from the bottom of our division so we can have a little bit of a cushion. Right now it’s not going right for us, but I have faith in this locker room and we all know what we need to do.”
That starts against the Canucks (23-13-4), a team that beat the Panthers 7-2 in their lone meeting this season on Oct. 28 and is coming off a 9-2 loss to the Lightning that snapped a seven-game win streak.
“We know they got beat pretty badly,” forward Mike Hoffman said, “and anytime that happens to a team, they’re always going to be coming back pretty hungry.”
The Panthers are going to need to be pretty hungry, too, if it wants to get this homestand back on track and keep its position in the playoff hunt.
“We can’t be happy,” Quenneville said. “You want to establish a great homestand and now all of a sudden we have to try to rectify that with a great effort.”
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